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Thanks for your response! I've always respected you, and I share so many of your beliefs on the culture war, so I am very interested in figuring out why I differ from you so much on this. Your time and patience is greatly appreciated!
I don't see how communism and other post-Enlightenment ideas were trying to "do as Christians do, just without believing any of the supernatural bits", which seems to be what you're saying, unless I misunderstand you. My impression is that these ideologies repudiated Christianity and everything Christians stood for. Isn't that sort of what you acknowledged later when you said "these ideologies were analyzed against Christian axioms, and were found [by Christians] to be incompatible with them"?
I agree that humans are fallible, susceptible to motivated reasoning, and usually start from their values and try to reason from there. But how are you not using reason when you decide what you value, or, if you prefer, when you decide which axioms are convincing? Presumably there's some reason you think that slavery is wrong, or that marriage is a good idea, or whatever else. Or, if those are downstream of some more abstract axiom, presumably there's some reason you think that axiom is convincing.
That's fair on some level, but again, it seems to me that Christians still used reason when deciding to adopt those axioms. So, what is inadequate about using reason to propose that Christian axioms are convincing (and/or adaptive, or whatever else), therefore we should live our lives and operate our society as Christians would, just without the supernatural bits?
What makes you think it requires belief (presumably you mean belief in the supernatural claims) to work?
Why? Surely a non-Christian can sincerely believe that monogamy and marriage are a good idea, to take one example?
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